Universal Social Protection and Health Care as a Social Common

Francine Mestrum ()
Additional contact information
Francine Mestrum: Global Social Justice

Development, 2020, vol. 63, issue 2, 238-243

Abstract: Abstract COVID-19 reveals the undeniable fact of our interdependence and some hard truths about our economic system. While this is nothing new, it will now be difficult for all those who preferred to ignore some basic facts to go on with business as usual. Our economy collapsed because people cannot buy more than what they actually need. But as the economy grows the more people get sick and need help. And our universal welfare systems never excluded so many people as they do now. The many flaws in the dominant thinking and policymaking do not only refer to our health systems, but are almost all linked to the way the neoliberal globalization is organized. Turn the thinking around, forget the unfettered profit-seeking, start with the real basic needs of people and all the so badly needed approaches logically fall in the basket: the link with social protection, with water, housing and income security, the link with participation and democracy. In this article, I want to sketch the journey from needs to commons, since that is where the road should be leading us to. It goes in the opposite direction of more austerity, more privatization, more fragmentation of our social policies. It also leads to paradigmatic changes, based on old concepts such as solidarity and a new way to define sustainability.

Keywords: Commons; Social protection; Health; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41301-020-00258-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:develp:v:63:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1057_s41301-020-00258-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/41301/PS2

DOI: 10.1057/s41301-020-00258-w

Access Statistics for this article

Development is currently edited by Stefano Prato

More articles in Development from Palgrave Macmillan, Society for International Deveopment Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().